Bower works extremely hard to keep his dislike of Wigan from surfacing, but sometimes he can't help himself.

The daft part of Saturday were the errors in our twenty weren’t about chancing our arm and coming unstuck. They were just concentration lapses. The Cust kick in our 30 metres just before half time was a brain fade. We’re all wanting to see us play attacking rugby but that just wasn’t the time or place. That’s what excites me really, we fix up those silly errors and pick out moments better and we’ll be in any game due to the attacking talent we have and the pace we posses. It was a 5 or 6 on 10 performance I thought and we still got the win.

He does indeed. John Davidson doesn’t hide it at all and then a guy like Richard Shaw-Wright makes you want to give up on life, let alone Rugby League. I don’t mind Phil Caplin tbh. He’s open and honest about loving Leeds but he tries to be balanced and tries to focus on the positives. I don’t know why some of them don’t go and get another job. A good mate of mine was in the same game until about 12-18 months ago and he’d maybe been ground down by the negatives and you wouldn’t get much positive out of him. Fair play to him, he walked away and got a new job. Banging the drum for everything negative about rugby league must be tiresome sometimes for these guys.

Phil is so bitter about Wigan’s dominance in the 80/90s not one week goes past where he doesn’t mention us having to sell Central Park to fund it all.

He can have that one I guess We did smash them and stop them winning anything for years. I find him generally positive about the game as a whole though, whereas some other actively seem to dislike it.

I said to my mate at the time that it was our 'Aguero moment'. I'm struggling to think of a final where we were losing up to the final couple of minutes, on the last tackle with nothing seemingly on and then bang, winner! Even Manfredi's try in the GF we were already winning, his try made it safe.

It’s just not done much at all in Rugby League. It’s easier to score a try, than it is a goal, so games aren’t generally as close as they are in football and that’s leads to very few moments like that one on Saturday, especially in finals. The try on Saturday wasn’t as late as the Welsby one in 2020 but you pretty much knew it was game over when he went in (easy to say now mind, I was packing them when they were kicking off) and that led to wild celebrations, the like of which I’ve not seen for a long time and probably won’t for a long time again.

That feeling is just amazing. You’d love to just go back and do it all again and again. We can count ourselves lucky that we were in the Stadium to witness it and not sat watching it on the TV like the Saints fans were in 2020. As much as we’re rivals and as much as they still all clearly love the moment, there’s nothing like being there, going crazy, jumping on strangers, running about like a not right and being with all your family and friends and they didn’t get that.

On a side note, I saw some stats for John Bateman earlier from the game in a post by England Rugby League and it got me thinking about the expectations on the lad. I thought he was good on the day and one of our better players but didn’t feel like it was anything out of the ordinary. He made 17 carries for 186 metres and 34 tackles. That’s just outstanding and he should be lauded but I think we just expect so much (and sometimes probably too much) from him and I’m guilty of that.

Great to see him playing so well and enjoying himself.

Wouldn't get in the Saints team

There's another side to it though. I think that Welsby try would have been horrific to have seen in the stadium. Was bad enough from behind the couch.

Imagine the feeling in the stadium

I just walked out the living room in a huff and sat on my own in the bathroom for half an hour I couldn’t have done that at Old Trafford (well I could but they’d have locked me in).

Rugby league is a simple game. The best team is the one which scores the most points and concedes the fewest. It is not synchronised swimming with points for artistic interpretation. It really annoys me to hear people lauding a negative game plan that allowed the opposition to snatch the victory at the end. That just says that Huddersfield did not get it right. It is the same when, in the football, coaches complain that the opposition parked the bus and would not allow the super rich to play their game. The best team on the day can overcome the oppositions game plan and win.